Complacency
and confusion contributed to the March 27, 1971, disaster at Fire Support
Base Mary Ann.By Kelly Bell

Running down the hallway of the battalion tactical
operations center (TOC), Captain Paul S. Spilberg
charged into a cloud of tear gas just as he reached the commander's quarters.
Staggering blindly back the way he had come, Spilberg made it to the north
exit, crawled up the stairs and out the door into the fresh but bullet-ridden
air. Forcing his eyes to focus, the shaken captain was stunned to hear
the fire of AK-47s and the crash of rocket-propelled grenades from inside
the base's perimeter. In amazement he watched as numerous small figures
darted catlike among the spreading flames. Everywhere he looked he saw
the scurrying silhouettes, who were enemy sappers feeding the chain of
explosions devouring Fire Support Base Mary Ann on that afternoon in 1971.

Four days before the fatal attack, Spilberg
had arrived at the FSB by helicopter. He was an old hand there, having
previously served at Mary Ann as a company commander. Along with three
assistants, he now had returned as a marksmanship instructor. His team
had established a training course using targets on a crude rifle range
set up on the FSB's southwest slope. The hill was garrisoned by Company
C, 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry (1-46), 196th Light Infantry Brigade, assigned
to the 23rd "Americal" Infantry Division.

The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel
William P. Doyle, was a serious professional.
Along with the Company C commander, Captain Richard V. Knight, Doyle had
molded this handful of reluctant draftees into one of the better combat
units still in the field in 1971. Mary Ann was in a generally quiet sector,
and the soldiers atop the hill had come to regard their outpost as something
of a rear echelon area rather than what it actually was -- the division's
most forward firebase.

On the afternoon of March 27, 1971, after
the soldiers had completed their target practice, the three officers remained
on the shooting range. They plinked with various weapons and talked awhile,
and then Doyle and Knight headed for the mess tent. Spilberg remained behind
to take a few more shots. He had only the base's mascot dog for company.
The mongrel suddenly bristled and began barking and growling at something
downslope that Spilberg could not locate. He had never seen the amiable
mutt behave like that, but try as he might he could not detect what was
agitating the animal. Finally deciding the dog must have scented a tiger
or cobra, Spilberg set out after the other officers. Much later he related:
"I never said anything to Doyle about that dog being on alert, but I should
have known. It bothered me for years and years. It was my second tour.
I should have known."

Three hours later the American firebase was
rocked from within by a series of powerful explosions. Spilberg was asleep
deep inside the TOC. The structure was a sturdily reinforced, half-buried
bunker, and from its interior Spilberg initially had a hard time recognizing
the muffled crashes. Thinking the base was taking mortar fire, he rolled
off his cot and began pulling on his boots and shirt. Before leaving the
bunker, he grabbed his .45-caliber pistol from under his pillow.

One of the sappers had thrown tear gas into
the TOC officers' quarters, and Colonel Doyle was trying desperately to
escape his gas-filled room. As he struggled to unlatch the plywood door,
a satchel charge detonated in the hallway, blowing the door from its hinges
and flattening him. Picking himself up, he turned toward the door and faced
a sapper wearing nothing but bush shorts, a gas mask and a full-body coating
of camouflage. When the Communist drew back to hurl another satchel charge,
Doyle raised his own .45 and shot him square in the chest. As the man fell
backward the bomb went off, blowing him to bits and flattening Doyle a
second time. Three more charges exploded in the hall before Doyle was able
to dig through the rubble and leave the bunker. By then he was bleeding
from fragmentation wounds in one leg and both arms. He was unable to hear
through his blood-filled ears, and could barely see through gas-seared
eyes.

For 45 minutes, the infiltrators sprinted throughout
the firebase, expertly planting their charges among the frantic, befuddled
Americans. As the assault concluded, the TOC was a towering pyre. Spilberg
picked up a damaged M-16 he found on the ground. Wincing from three grenade
fragments in his back, he made for Knight's company command post to see
if the captain had survived. The CP was a bonfire and beginning to collapse.
As he reached the crumbling entrance, Spilberg could hear ammunition exploding
in the flames. He peered inside but saw only a blazing vision of hell.
Somewhere within that inferno, Knight lay dead.

The company CP and battalion TOC had been the
primary targets for the brilliantly executed sapper assault, and Knight
was one of 30 Americans killed. On the morning of March 28, Doyle and Spilberg
were among the 82 wounded GIs evacuated.

The first indicator that something bad was
afoot had come on the night of March 25-26. Lieutenant Scott Bell was on
patrol, on what was supposed to be his last night on the hill. As he squinted
into the surrounding silent, mist-cloaked jungle, he sensed an almost tangible
uneasiness in the air, and felt a primordial sense of dread that motivated
him to organize one last big rat kill before his departure. Maybe that
would keep his men alert.

The soldiers knew the drill. They constructed
ingenious rattraps from empty C-ration cans laced with cheese and blasting
caps. All night the men counted miniature explosions as squirrel-sized
Asian rats died in the competition between platoons. By dawn there were
130 dead rodents laid out in neat lines in front of the CP. These were
the last fireworks here for Bell and Company A. The next morning they moved
out and were replaced by Captain Knight and his Charlie Company, who were
transferred in from Chu Lai.

Charlie Company settled into the new position
and started policing the area in preparation for a visit from the brigade
commander, Colonel William Hathaway, who had been unhappy with Company
A on his last inspection. Knight hurriedly set his men to work disposing
of dead rats, marijuana cigarette butts, empty whiskey bottles and other
such junk left behind by their predecessors. When Hathaway, accompanied
by Doyle and Knight, walked the perimeter that afternoon, he was delighted
with the improvement over what he had seen a week earlier. Hathaway, however,
did not inspect the tactical outer wire because, he later explained, "somewhere
along the line you have to put the trust in the company commander."

But the outer defenses were not in order.
As Lieutenant Jerry Sams, leader of C Company's 2nd Platoon, later explained:
"The sergeant major was on everybody's ass about policing the area before
the inspection, and they had my platoon out there picking paper off the
wire. Those helicopters would come in and kick up all kinds of crap. I
had to send the guys out two or three times, and it was one of those typical
Army things where everybody's bitching and raising hell. They were accidentally
setting off trip flares in the wire -- all our early warning devices that
would have come in mighty handy later on that night."

Additional trip flares were triggered by the
prop blast of CH-47 helicopters as they landed at and took off from the
FSB. The Americans did not replace the flares. In hindsight, Hathaway thought
overconfidence might have been another factor contributing to the debacle.
"Charlie Company, commanded by Captain Knight, was certainly the best company
in that battalion, and probably one of the best companies in this division,"
Hathaway said later. "One of the problems was that they were so good they
were a little contemptuous of the enemy. They were the hunters, not the
hunted."

Another cause for the false sense of security
was that there had been no signs of an impending attack. Major Alva V.
Hardin, the 196th Infantry Brigade's intelligence officer, later testified,
"We had no intelligence to indicate there would be an attack on Mary Ann."

The lack of listening posts outside the wire
was another critical mistake. When Hathaway learned Doyle had not deployed
LPs beyond the outer perimeter, he concurred. "Listening posts were not
a policy," explained Hathaway. "I considered listening posts outside the
wire a hazard. I considered the danger of people getting wounded, either
by defensive fires or somebody getting excited and firing on the perimeter,
to be greater than the necessity for the listening post."

Mary Ann had been constructed on the bulldozed
summit of a ridge running northwest to southeast. In profile the elevation
looked like the back of a camel, with the base stretching 500 meters across
both humps. It was 75 meters wide between the humps, and 125 meters broad
at each end. A continuous trench that was knee- to waist-deep and had 22
bunkers formed the perimeter. Inside the perimeter were 30 buildings of
various styles, giving the appearance of a shantytown. The whole thing
was surrounded by two belts of concertina wire.

Two dirt roads interrupted the trench and wire
line of the perimeter. Doyle had tried unsuccessfully to have chain-link
fencing flown in to close the openings, but higher headquarters, noting
that the base was soon to be turned over to the ARVN, decided against providing
construction materials for the soldiers of South Vietnam. The road openings
remained.

With the 196th Infantry Brigade already scheduled
for redeployment to Da Nang, Doyle had ceased all construction projects
within and around Mary Ann and had started packing for the move. By March
most of the base's mortars and artillery had been airlifted to nearby LZ
Mildred to fire on enemy positions in that sector. By March 27, all of
Mary Ann's starlight scopes and ground radars had been shipped to the rear
for maintenance.

On the night of the attack, the infantry under
Doyle at Mary Ann consisted of 231 Americans and 21 South Vietnamese, plus
the battalion training team, battalion intelligence officer, the sergeant
major, an interpreter and 22 transient soldiers from Companies A, B and
D. The transient troops spending the night at the base were in no mood
to remain on alert. Specialist 4 Harold Wise was one of those who had just
arrived. "Thirty percent of the guys on the hill were heads," he said later.
"Marijuana, heroin, whatever you wanted. The guys in the sensor hooch next
to the tactical operations center were potheads, and a lot of people congregated
there to buy stuff, but unless they knew you, you didn't come in. They
had locks on the door of their hooch. Nobody did it in the open. It wasn't
brazen. If an officer saw somebody doing it, he'd bust the guy. Some of
the officers and sergeants knew what was going on, but as long as you did
your job, they didn't say anything."

The drug problem on the base, although not
as pronounced as in other areas, was still sufficient to benefit the enemy.
Battery C, 3rd Battalion, 16th Field Artillery (155mm), was aligned in
battery formation atop the base's highest elevation. The infiltrators quickly
destroyed both of the unit's howitzers. Staff Sergeant Easton Rowell, the
chief of the firing battery, was wounded six times. He later groused, "We
took a screwin' because the grunts on that hill were a bunch of potheads!"

At 0200 hours on March 28, an American
searchlight crew conducted a cursory 20-minute illumination sweep of the
slope outside the exit to the firing range. The hillside had been cleared
of vegetation, but still was punctuated by boulders and tree stumps, all
of which provided good hiding places for the small enemy. Seeing nothing
unusual, the GIs shut down their light and headed for their bunker. The
explosions started 10 minutes later.

The attackers were from the Main Force VC 409th
Sapper Battalion. This unit was known for operating against the ARVN in
Quang Nam province, and at that time was thought by out-of-date U.S. intelligence
to be 15 to 20 kilometers east of Mary Ann, preparing for a major push
against the South Vietnamese.

The 409th sappers were experts in their trade.
With AK-47s strapped to their backs, grenades in their belts and satchel
charges fastened to their chests, they wore nothing but khaki shorts and
soot. They crawled silently, slowly and steadily through the jungle, using
their fingertips as probes. When they detected trip flares, they used lengths
of bamboo, carried in their teeth, to tie down the strikers. When they
felt wires leading to Claymore mines, they used wire cutters to cut the
lines. They were careful to cut only two-thirds of the way through the
strands of concertina, then used their fingers to break the rest of the
way through the wire silently and without shaking the large coils.

Approaching from the southwest, the infiltrators
cut four big gaps through the concertina, two holes on each side of the
road where it left the perimeter. They repeated the procedure 50 meters
farther on, through the second barrier, although the wire there was in
such a state of disrepair that many sappers simply walked across the rusty,
breaking steel strands. Another 30 yards and they came to the final concertina
barrier. Rather than risk having the snip of cutters heard by some alert
sentry, the infiltrators simply spread a gap through the wire, tying it
open with bamboo strips.

The sappers were well-rehearsed. Splitting
up into three- and six-man squads in the zone between the inner wire barrier
and the bunkers facing southwest, the assault teams waited until 0230 hours.
Then their supporting mortars opened with accurate fire on the TOC and
CP on the base's southeast side, and on the remaining U.S. mortar and artillery
positions in the northwest area.

A card game in the radio room was just breaking
up when the first rounds hit. The explosion hurled Wise onto his back,
knocked off his glasses, broke his left arm and sprayed the front of his
body head-to-foot with fragments. Using his right arm to drag himself into
his hooch, he shook awake his roommate, Pfc Peter Detlef, and then hid
behind his reel-to-reel tape deck as he seated himself on the floor and
tried to cover the door with his M-16. When Detlef, still half asleep,
tried to go through the door, another explosion blasted the door off its
frame and on top of him.

As the VC had anticipated, most defenders were
immobilized by confusion. One radioman never bothered to crank up his radio
to report the situation, but simply rolled off his cot onto his hut's dirt
floor and hid beneath his mattress until the shooting stopped.

Inside the TOC, Spc. 4 Stephen Gutosky grabbed
his radio mike and reported: "Be advised, we are taking incoming at this
time! Stand by and I'll see if I can get a direction on it!"

When he realized with a start that he was still
inside the TOC, he shouted into his microphone: "I can't get outside to
see where it's coming from! Just fire all the countermortars and counterrockets
you got ASAP!"

By that point the south end of the TOC was
burning from the inside after a satchel charge set off a case of white
phosphorus grenades. Yet Doyle still refused to abandon his position. After
ordering Gutosky to radio for helicopter gunships and illumination, the
wounded colonel said, "I'm going out to see what's going on!"

Doyle did not realize how badly he was hurt.
He was almost deaf and blind from tear gas, powder burns and explosion
concussions. The shrapnel wounds in his arms and legs would take months
to heal. Nonetheless he made it to the top of the exit steps, raised his
M-16 and started to aim at a couple of infiltrators outside the bunker
-- but a third, unseen enemy soldier threw a grenade at him. It landed
at his feet and exploded as he turned to head back inside, blowing him
down the stairs.

The entire TOC was now burning. Lieutenant
Edward McKay, the TOC night duty officer, started to panic in the ovenlike
bunker. "We gotta get outta here!" screamed McKay.

"Not yet!" hollered Doyle.

"We're all going to die!" sobbed McKay.

Summoning his last element of strength, Doyle
slapped the hysterical junior officer hard across the face and snarled,
"Shut up, lieutenant!"

It was now 0251, and radio telephone operator
(RTO) David Tarnay managed to raise LZ Mildred. When Spilberg heard Tarnay
shouting into his microphone, he bounded back inside the blazing TOC. Grabbing
a handset, he shouted to Lieutenant Thomas Schmitz at LZ Mildred: "I want
artillery 50 meters out, 360 degrees around our position. On my command
be prepared to fire on the firebase!"

Spilberg realized that calling down fire on
his own position was likely the only way to save the surviving Americans
there. Doyle next grabbed the mike and informed Schmitz they were being
forced to evacuate the TOC and would temporarily lose radio contact. With
Tarnay and Gutosky carrying all the radio equipment they could, and with
the now-incoherent McKay slung over Tarnay's shoulder, the handful of resolute
GIs made their way to the firebase aid station, where Tarnay put McKay
on a cot and then tried to get a radio working.

Doyle and Spilberg left the aid station and
crossed the compound to the Charlie Company CP. When they arrived they
found that it too was an inferno, its sandbagged entrance collapsed.

Throughout Mary Ann, unprepared Americans were
shot and blown apart by the VC sappers, who seemed to know precisely where
to concentrate their assault. Later, some survivors would accuse the South
Vietnamese of cooperating with the attackers. Specialist 4 Steven Webb
was the only U.S. soldier who was with the base's ARVN contingent throughout
the fight. Despite later rumors that ARVN troops had fired on Americans
that night, Webb said he never saw it happen.

Nevertheless, suspicion and bitterness lingered.
One of Knight's NCOs, Staff Sgt. John Calhoun, later remarked, "It was
an inside job."

Specialist 4 Edward L. Newton concurred. "That
morning before the attack, an ARVN officer came up to our bunker and asked
how we got out of the perimeter," he recalled. "We asked him why he wanted
to know. He said because he and his men wanted to go down there fishing.
We thought it was kind of peculiar. We said we did not know for sure."

The officer, who wore the insignia of a South
Vietnamese first lieutenant, persisted in his questioning of the Americans
until some of them told him the easiest way in and out was the south end
and on the road running past the rifle range to the water point.

Specialist 5 Carl Cullers later claimed: "[I
saw] an ARVN going behind the rifle range. It was more or less a joke at
first. One of the cooks said, ‘Hey Cullers, there's an NVA down there,'
and I said, ‘Quit joking,' and he said, ‘Wait, and I'll point him out to
you.' I knew he was an ARVN by his size. He had gone out beyond the rifle
range, and down the slope for about 20 minutes. I took it for granted he
had gone down to defecate."

Sergeant Andrew Olints of Company D was next
to the helipad at dusk on the 27th when "an ARVN chopper came out, and
fifteen of those little suckers got on," as he later reported. "They were
thrilled to death, jumping on, pushing each other. I didn't think the thing
would take off, it was so overloaded. We had no idea what was coming, but
in retrospect it sure looked like they did."

Specialist 4 Gary Noller, an RTO at LZ Mildred,
later wrote: "I remember an incident where a GI came to the TOC and said
that an ARVN was signaling with a flashlight to someone outside the wire."
He said he went to check it out. "[i] did encounter an ARVN with a GI flashlight
near the east perimeter wire," Noller remembered. "I told him not to use
it, in English, which he probably didn't understand, and then reported
this to an officer. The incident was not treated seriously by the officers,
but added credence as far as the GIs were concerned that some of the ARVN
were not on our side."

In one of the most dramatic events of the night,
Lieutenant Barry McGee, who had been sleeping atop bunker No. 10 when the
attack started, stumbled half asleep into his platoon CP with several of
his men just as the enemy targeted the position. McGee was the leader of
C Company's 3rd Platoon, which manned bunkers Nos. 9 through 13. As he
and his men grabbed their weapons and prepared to return outside, two mortar
rounds hit the bunker, half demolishing it and dislodging a heavy ceiling
beam that fell on the lieutenant, seriously injuring his head. A medic
dressed the wound, and after about 15 minutes the men in the platoon CP
noted that the explosions outside seemed to be ending. McGee had just lurched
to his feet, turned to the door and said, "All right, let's go!" when a
grenade sailed through the door, exploded and blew the medic, Spc. 5 Carl
Patton, back into McGee. Realizing he had lost his weapon, McGee grabbed
Patton's M-16 and again headed for the door. Another satchel charge detonated
on the roof, caving it in and killing 22-year-old Sergeant Warren Ritsema
when a beam fell on him. The blast knocked down McGee, who again lost his
weapon. He staggered to his feet and stumbled outside, incoherent with
pain and frustration. When the short, stocky, powerfully built and unarmed
lieutenant collided with a sapper outside the bunker, McGee wrestled him
to the ground and strangled him with his bare hands. It was quite a feat
for somebody already half-dead from a fractured skull. The lieutenant's
corpse was later found atop the VC he had choked lifeless. Another sapper
had shot McGee in the back.

At 0320, Spilberg and Doyle were at the southern
end of Mary Ann, believing the attack was almost over. But then, partly
obscured by the billowing smoke, another team of sappers started back up
the hill, throwing grenades in all directions. Apparently searching for
their own dead and wounded, the VC broke contact and withdrew when the
first helicopter gunship finally arrived overhead. It was commanded by
Captain Norman Hayes, Troop D, 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry. Hayes radioed
LZ Mildred that he had arrived at his objective and to lift and shift the
artillery fire Spilberg had earlier ordered. Mildred ceased firing except
for illumination rounds. When Hayes' searchlight illuminated VC in the
wire, they opened up on the gunship with small arms. As Hayes later put
it, "We engaged, and I know that anything we fired on ceased firing on
us."

Hayes made repeated passes over the base, dropping
grenades and strafing targets of opportunity, despite two of his guns becoming
inoperative almost immediately after his arrival on station. He made repeated
radio calls for additional gunships and medevacs, but by the time he ran
low on fuel and had to return to Chu Lai, no additional aircraft had arrived.
Because of the chaotic state of communications, the brigade and division
were under the misconception that Mary Ann had been subjected to nothing
more than mortaring. Hayes actually had time to return to Chu Lai, refuel,
reload and repair his guns, and then fly all the way back to Mary Ann,
before medical helicopters began arriving. Colonel Hathaway and Lt. Col.
Richard Martin, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery, arrived
with the medevacs. Spilberg was almost amused at their reaction to the
devastation, later remarking: "They were in a state of shock. They had
just walked into Auschwitz."

Despite having a gutful of fragments, Spilberg
at first refused to leave the base. He wanted all his wounded men taken
out before him, and when Doyle told him to board a chopper he simply climbed
in one door and out the other side. Not until Hathaway gave him a direct
order did Spilberg finally leave. He was later awarded the Silver Star.
Spilberg also recommended Doyle for a Silver Star, but Hathaway refused
to endorse the nomination. He later said he was tortured by the decision,
explaining, "I just felt that although he had conducted himself with a
certain amount of valor, the situation had occurred because of shortcomings
on his part."

At 1600 the next day, the enemy hit the ruins
of Mary Ann with 12.7mm machine gun fire, sweeping the enclosure from a
ridgeline to the north. One GI was wounded in the attack. Fifteen dead
sappers were collected from within the base, although blood trails indicated
several dead and wounded had been dragged back into the jungle. After the
debacle, however, the South Vietnamese decided they did not want to garrison
Mary Ann. The FSB was closed and abandoned on April 24, 1971.

General Creighton Abrams, commander of the
U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, held 23rd Infantry Division
commander Maj. Gen. James Baldwin responsible
for the disaster, and relieved him of his command. The 23rd ID's name had
been eternally tarnished three years earlier because of the My Lai massacre.
Many in the U.S. Army suspected that Baldwin would not have been fired
had he been in any other division.

Both Hathaway and Doyle received career-ending
formal reprimands. Being blamed for the Mary Ann tragedy was a crushing
blow to Doyle. He and his wife divorced soon after his release from the
hospital. He remarried in April 1972 -- just two weeks before receiving
his letter of reprimand from Army chief of staff General William Westmoreland.
Doyle cut his honeymoon short in order to make a personal but futile appeal
to Westmoreland. Doyle developed a severe drinking problem, and he died
of a heart attack in March 1984. He was 52. Hathaway and Spilberg were
among those following his caisson to the gravesite at Arlington National
Cemetery. While delivering the funeral oration, Spilberg spoke for many
when he referred to Doyle as "the last casualty of Firebase Mary Ann."

This article was written by Kelly Bell and
originally published in the April 2006 issue of Vietnam Magazine.

DOYLE, WILLIAM PLTC US ARMYVIETNAMDATE OF BIRTH: 07/29/1931DATE OF DEATH: 03/15/1984BURIED AT: SECTION 3 SITE 4300-1